Good Society
The Good Society refers to a society that provides the proper conditions for realization of full human potential.[1] It is a phrase used by Maslow in his speculations and discussion of Human Potential. It is syncretic with Maslow's term Eupsychia
Abraham Maslow Terms
B-Cognition, B-Realm, Big Problem, D-Cognition, D-Realm, Deficiency Diseases, Eupsychia, Eupsychian Theory, Good Person, Good Science, Good Society, Good Specimen, Hierarchy of Basic Needs, Hierarchy of Cognitive Needs, Intrinsic Consciousness, Normalcy, Normative Biology, Plateau Experience, Self-Actualization, Transcending Self-Actualizers, Transhumanistic
Syncretic Terms
Eupsychia > Good Society, Normative Biology
Components of Eupsychia
Eupsychia > Good Person, Good Science, Good Society, Good Specimen
Big Problems
Big Problems > Good Person, Good Society
Related LP Terms
Non-LP Related Terms
Notes
Maslow was very clear that environment played a huge role in actuating full human potential.
"To cite a single line of experimentation (I) we can say for White rats. monkeys. and human beings that a stimulating e environment in the early life of the individual has quite specific effects on the development of the cerebral cortex in which we would generally call a desirable direction. Behavioral studies at Harlow's Primate Laboratory come to the same conclusion. Isolated animals suffer the 1051 of various capacities. and beyond a certain point these losses frequently become irreversible. At the Jackson Labs in Bar Harbor. To take another example, it was found that dogs allowed to run loose in the fields and in packs, without human contact, lose the potentiality for becoming domesticated, that is, pets.
Finally. if children in India are suffering irreversible brain damage through lack of proteins in their dietary. as is now being reported, and if it is agreed that the [colonial] political system of India, its history, its economics, and its culture are all involved in producing this scarcity, then it is clear that human specimens need good societies to permit them to actualize themselves as good specimens." [2]
Maslow also felt that we could take steps to determine what a good society was by looking at the Good Specimen, and observing their choices and behaviours.
"My theory of metamotivation (Chapter 23) ultimately rests upon this operation, namely, of taking superior people who are also superior percievers, not only of facts but of values and then using their choices of ultimate values as possibly the ultimate values for the whole species....The questions then come up: Who is the good chooser? Where does. he come from? What kind of life history does he have? Can we teach this skill'! What hurts it? What helps it? These are. of course. simply new ways of asking the old philosophical questions. "Who is a sage? What is a sage?'" And beyond that of raising the old axiological questions. "What is good? What is desirable? What should be desired'!" I must reassen that we have come to the point in biological history where we· now are responsible for our own evolution. We have become self-evolvers. Evolution means selecting and These are. of course."[3]
"The equally Big Problem as urgent as the one I have already mentioned is to make the Good Society. There is a kind of a feedback between the Good Society and the Good Person. They need each other, they are sine qua non to each other. I wave aside the problem of which comes first. It is quite clear that they develop simultaneously and in tandem. It would in any case be impossible to achieve either one without the other. By Good Society I mean ultimately one species, one world. We also have beginning information (83. see also Chapter 14) on the possibility of autonomously societal, that is, non-psychological arrangements. To clarify. it is now clear that with the goodness of the person held constant, it is possible to make social arrangements that will force these people into either evil behavior or into good behavior. The main point is that social institutional arrangements must be taken as different from intrapsychic health, and that to some extent the goodness or badness of a person depends upon the social institutions and arrangements in which he finds himself."[4]
Footnotes
- ↑ Maslow, A. H. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature New York: Viking, 1971. p. 5-6
- ↑ Maslow, A. H. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature New York: Viking, 1971. p. 5-8.
- ↑ Maslow, A. H. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature New York: Viking, 1971. p. 9-10.
- ↑ Maslow, A. H. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature New York: Viking, 1971. p. 18-19.
